Friday, May 13, 2016

In my last two posts, I have reported on the search by Melbourne based researcher Paul Dean and I, for potential "Foo-Fighter" sightings from Australia, following the recent interest in this topic generated by long term Boston researcher Barry Greenwood.

While typing up these posts the thought passed through my mind as to whether or not, there were any newspaper articles published in Australia, about this topic during the years of World War II?

I therefore looked at the TROVE digitised newspaper collection, held by the National Library of Australia. Indeed there are such newspaper articles. I located six in all, so far.

THE ARTICLES

(1) Newcastle Sun (New South Wales) 3 January 1945 page 8.

"Foo fighters are latest

Our special representative

Washington - Tuesday

Pilots flying over Germany at night report that strange balls of fire are following them around on their missions. They have christened these strange phenomena "Foo fighters."

One pilot reported "A Foo Fighter picked me up recently at 700 feet and chased me down the Rhone Valley. I turned to starboard and two red balls of fire turned with me. I turned to port and they turned too. I was doing 260 miles an hour and they kept up with me. I had a horrible thought that the Germans on the ground would press a button and explode them, but they don't explode or attack - they merely follow us like will of the wisps."

Physicists suggest that what was seen was St Elmo's Fire, which, in stormy weather, sometimes appears at the mastheads of ships and on land at the tops of trees and steeples.

It is a sort of electrical discharge, red when positive and blue when negative.

Another suggestion is that they might be gaseous balls of fire controlled by radio from the ground and designed to interfere with radar signals."

(2) Argus (Melbourne) 3 January 1945 page 1.

Image courtesy of National Library of Australia

"Germans using fireballs against allied planes

From our correspondent in New York

American pilots are encountering fireballs that race alongside the wings of the American fighter planes over the Reich says American Associated Press correspondent at a US night fighter base. Named "Foo Fighters," these balls keep pace with the planes. There are three varieties - those that fly alongside, others which fly in front of the plane and a third kind seen at a distance in groups of 15.

The Americans believe they are meant to have a psychological effect. They do not attack planes, but follow like will-o-the-wisps."

(3) Barrier Miner (Broken Hill) 4 January 1945 page 7.

"Germans use fireballs

New York

American pilots are encountering fireballs that race alongside the wings of the American fighter planes over the Reich says American Associated Press correspondent at a US night fighter base. Named "Foo Fighters" these balls keep pace with the planes. There are three varieties, the ones which fly alongside, other which fly in front of the plane and a third kind seen at a distance in groups of 15. The Americans believe they are meant to have a psychological effect. They do not attack planes , but follow like will-o-the-wisps."

(4) Army News (Darwin) 9 January 1945 page 3.

Image courtesy National Library of Australia

"Balls of fire chased fighters

Washington.

Same text as (1) above.

(5) The Uralla Times (New South Wales) 15 March 1945 page 4.

"Balls of fire race alongside allied planes

A US night fighter base, France Jan 2

The Nazis have thrown something new into the sky over Germany - the weird, mysterious "foo fighter", balls of fire which race alongside the wings of American Beaufighters flying intruder missions over the Reich.

US pilots have been encountering the eerie "foo fighters" for more than a month in their night flights. No one apparently knows exactly what this sky weapon is.

The balls of fire appear suddenly and accompanying the planes for miles. They appear to be radio controlled from the ground and manage to keep up with planes flying 300 miles an hour, official intelligence reports disclose.

'There are three kinds of these lights we call "foo fighters" said Lieut Donald Meiers, of Chicago. "One is red balls of fire which appear off aircraft wing tips and fly along with us, the second is a vertical row of three balls of fire, which fly in front of us and the third is a group of about 15 lights which appear off in the distance - like a Christmas tree up in the air - and flicker on and off."

The pilots of this night fighter squadron - in operations since September 1944 - find these fiery balls the weirdest thing they have as yet encountered. They are convinced that the 'foo fighter' is designed to be a psychological weapon as well as military although it it not the nature of the fireballs to attack planes.

"A 'foo fighter' picked me up recently at 700 feet and chased me 20 miles down the Rhone Valley," Lieut Meiers said. "I turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the port side and they turned with me. We were going 260 miles an hour and the balls were keeping right up with us."

"On another occasion when a 'foo fighter' picked us up I dived at 300 miles an hour. It kept right on our wingtips for a while and then zoomed up into the sky.

"When I first saw the things off my wing tips I had the horrible thought that a German on the ground was ready to press a button and explode them. But they didn't explode or attack us. They just seem to follow us like will-o-the-wisps."

An Associated Press report from Paris Dec. 13 said the Germans had thrown silvery balls into the air against day raiders. Pilots then reported they had seen these objects, both individually and in clusters during foreys over the Reich.

Foo Fighters that dog fliers in Europe partly explained

New York Jan 3

The Descriptions of the new German foo fighters, or balls of fire, fit into several well known electrical phenomena.

These are induction, ball lightning and have some, though not all the aspects of St Elmo's Fire. If they are electrical, they are something created in the air close to the planes, rather than anything shot like artillery shells or anything floating in the air and wait for a plane.

Induction is suggested by the report that the foo fighters keep up with the plane's speed, changes in speed, or changes in direction.

Electrical induction of some sort would explain such movement synchronization. Nothing else that is well known would explain such perfect timings. Radio control from the ground does not explain the timing, unless radio control is meant to describe a beam which is part of the automatic induction.

Induction, however, fails completely to describe what happens when a fireball zooms upward leaving its plane. Apparently the balls fly paths thousands of feet away from the planes.

The common experience that resembles this trick is ball lightning. How anyone could produce ball lighting is unknown. Exactly what ball lighting may be is also unknown. But it is a quite harmless thing even as the German foo-balls are reported to be. A lightning ball can explode in your front yard, making a loud bang but doing little or no damage.

St Elmos' Fire is a brush discharge of static electricity, which streams off some solid object with brilliant intensity. Aviators are familiar with brush discharges and would recognise them, so that the foo-balls are probably not ordinary St Elmo's Fire. The deep purple color of brush discharge static would explain the reports that the foo-balls are red. The shade of red has not been reported. Ball lighting has been reported in slightly red shades.

A reason for the foo-balls, again based on experience, is interference with radar, radio or perhaps with a plane's ignition. Ignition interference would stop a plane in the air. It was a real project in Italy before the wat, and how to do it is well known in theory in the United States. All you needed then to stop a plane five or more miles away, was a power plant equal to Niagara Falls.

A guess can be made that the foo-balls are evidence that German natural scientists have found some way to get around part of the power trouble in interference, the fact that they are using them, and so disclosing their secrets to the Allies, would indicate that they do not hope to attain to ignition interference power."

"If it was not a hoax or an optical illusion, it was certainly the most puzzling secret weapon that allied fighters have yet encountered.

Recently, night fighter pilots based in France told a strange story of balls of fire which for more than a month had been following their planes at night over Germany. No one seemed to know what, if anything, the fireballs were supposed to accomplish.

Pilots, guessing that it was a new psychological weapon, named it the 'Foo Fighter.' Their description of the apparition varied, but they agreed that the mysterious flares stuck close to their planes and appeared to follow them at high speed for miles. One pilot said that a foo fighter, appearing as red balls of fire off his wing, stuck with him until he dived at 360 miles an hour; then the balls zoomed into the sky.

Sceptical scientists baffled by the whole affair, were inclined to dismiss the fireballs as an illusion, perhaps an after-image of light, which remained in the pilot's eyes after they had been dazzled by flak bursts. But front-line correspondents and arm-chair experts had a field day. They solemnly guessed -

(1) that the balls of fire were radio-controlled (an obvious absurdity, since they could not be synchronized with a plane's movements by remote control;

(2) that they were created by "electrical induction of some sort,"

(3) that they were attracted to a plane by magnetism.

The correspondents guessed that foo fighters were initiated -

(1) to dazzle pilots;

(2) to serve as aiming points for anti-aircraft gunners;

(3) to interfere with a plane's radar;

(4) to cut a plane's ignition, thus stop its engine in mid-air.

Some scientists suggested another possibility, that the foo-balls were nothing more than St Elmo's Fire, a reddish, brush-like discharge of atmospheric electricity which has often been seen near the tips of church steeples, ships' masts and yardarms."

My comments

1. These articles, even though they are spread across January to June 1945, seem to come from one primary source. The Uralla Times article provides the lengthiest reporting, derived, it says from a US night fighter base in France, and cites a date of 2 January 1945.

2. It is noted that none of the six articles, mentions,whether or not, any similar reports were appearing in the Pacific region of the war.

3. I also note that many of the documents in the National Archives of Australia's files, which have bee referenced in my earlier two blog posts about this subject, have been marked "secret." Thus in early 1945 it is unlikely that anyone outside of the Australian Department of Defence, would have been aware of any similar sightings by RAAF crews flying in the Pacific war arena.

The search, by Melbourne based researcher Paul Dean and I, for additional similar sightings by RAAF aircrews, will continue.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

I have now been through two more files from the National Archives of Australia, looking for possible "Foo-Fighters" like sightings.

The first file was NAA file series A9652 control symbol box 15, barcode 13057971, titled "RAAF squadron narrative reports - 18 squadron" based in Australia. Its date range was January 1944 to May 1945. I found nothing of interest.

The second file was NAA file series A9652 control symbol box 16, barcode 13057972, titled "RAAF squadron narrative reports - 20, 21 and 22 squadrons" with a date range of October 1943 to May 1945. I found the following.

I note that the reports were careful to use terms such as verey light; unidentified aircraft; searchlight etc. when describing what they were seeing. Out of 851 pages on this file, with several hundred action reports, I located only the three above and the one below which used the term "rocket."

(2) 15 October 1944.
A 20 squadron aircraft on its way at night, reported:

"White rocket sighted from position half way along North coast Madoera Island 1400z."

Sunday, May 8, 2016

"Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II" authored by Keith Chester (published by Anomalist Books in 2007) is an excellent resource concerning information about "Foo-Fighters."

Image courtesy of Amazon Books

US researcher Barry Greenwood was recently the recipient of 8000 pages of documentation about "Foo-Fighters" from Chester. Discussions between Greenwood and Melbourne based researcher Paul Dean, raised the possibility of a search for any similar sightings buried in military records held by the National Archives of Australia (NAA).

Paul Dean has already posted two blog posts on his own blog. Click here and here to read these. Paul later located, several potentially interesting files in the NAA. Paul and I have divided these up in order to search through them. These files contain dozens of intelligence reports of missions flown out of Australia.

So far, a two hour search by myself has reviewed NAA file series A9652, control symbol Box 14, barcode 13057920. It is titled "RAAF Squadron narrative reports - 18 Squadron" and dated 1943.
On this file, I found two potentially interesting observations.

(1) "Unexplained sightings."

On the 26 June 1943, aircraft undertook Operation NEI 18 which was to attack Penfoey in order to destroy any aircraft at the aerodrome. Unusually, the mission report has an additional paragraph titled "Unexplained Sightings."

"Bombadier on Duty three reports that he experienced for a second time a peculiar light underneath the plane, thought to be at ground level, dull streaks, which follow a wavy course, but on the whole follow the same course as the aircraft.

Smoke has been seen similar to that emitted from a rocket. Left behind as the object shoots along, and the rate of travel is fairly fast.

A more close look will be kept on the next mission to obtain further details. Bombadier did not report this on the first time seen as he did not pay much attention, and was not sure he had actually seen the occurrence on the first occasion of sighting."

The Bombadier on Duty three was listed as "Sgt. McPhee."

(2) "Unexplained occurrence."

"On the 24 July 1943, aircraft conducted Operation NEI 36, which was to attack the Koepang and Tenau areas.

Aircraft Duty 8 "...reports while passing over Babaoe a verey light, blue to white light shone for 2-3 seconds in that vicinity."

"Bombadier Duty 8 states that he would not have reported this occurrence but for the fact that the light went up. Other observers have discussed question before and always estimated that lights seen were shooting stars, but as streak went up Bomabdier mentioned this fact.

The supposition is now put forward that the lights signal (reported above) and the absence of A/A may indicate the presence of night fighters.

Observer states that the light went overhead and ahead, rose up and then suddenly stopped. The rise coupled with the sudden extinguishment would seem to preclude any possibility of a shooting star. Aircraft was at the time flying straight and steady.

It is known that enemy aircraft do not always attack when flying at night (see Summary No. 104, Paras 52 to 63) and it may be that the enemy is practising in this theatre to endeavour to effect interceptions.

One noticeable difference is the absence of searchlights. No sighting of enemy aircraft was made."

The mission report gives the name of the Duty 8 Bombadier as F/O Simpson.

Paul and I will bring you any other observations which we find on this series of files.

About Me

I have been interested in the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) since the 1960's.
Over the years I have held a variety of roles in numerous Australian state, national, and international organisations, studying the phenomena.
My work has appeared in various state, national and international newsletters, magazine and journals.
Between 2003 and 2008 I was involved in a search for Australian government documents relating to UAP with the Adelaide based AURA network. Post 2008 I have continued this work alone, or with Melbourne based researcher, Paul Dean.
Here is a link to my cataloguing work. http://www.project1947.com/kbcat/
From 1 July 2016 I have lowered my profile to focus on a limited number of research activities, which include "cold case" reviews; and working on specific projects with Isaac Koi; Paul Dean, and Anthony Clarke.